I went a head and installed the current nvidia driver on my Core, it had a GeForce 8500 GT card.

I could use the current driver because my card was supported. Older hardware needs different versions.

apt-get update && apt-get install nvidia-current && nvidia -xconfig

When I built my MD's (both could run the current driver) they came up with the nvidia driver. Whether this happened because I installed the nvidia driver on the Core before creating the MD's, or, the MD get created with the nvidia drivers.

I'm not sure.

MD's use a different process when generated and can even have different kernels.